Real
by Scheherazade's Daughter
Summary: "How much of it was real?" Skye and Ward meet after the fall of SHIELD. Post-finale Skyward redemption fic ... sort of. You should know by now that nothing I write is ever that simple.
1. The First Meeting

**Author's note**: I am so, so sorry. This was only meant to be about 2k words, but all of you who've read _When the Fireflies Came _know that I have this problem with length. Remember when my stories used to be 1k, 900, even 700 words? Those were the days. Okay, stuff you should know for this story: malaria is a mosquito-borne parasite endemic to sub-Saharan Africa among other places, and two drugs used to treat it are chloroquine and quinine. C-4 and Semtex are both military grade explosives. Smallpox is an incredibly deadly virus that is now extinct except in a few laboratories (as far as we know). BSL is British Sign Language. Hypoxic brain injuries can in fact cause speech difficulties, partial paralysis, and seizures. I think that's pretty much it, so without further ado, I give you Grant Ward and Skye in _Real._

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><p>"Name?" the triage nurse asked him.<p>

"Grant … Simmons," former SHIELD Agent Grant Ward told her. "Grant Simmons," he repeated, with a little more conviction.

The nurse, a stern, gaunt woman with iron-gray hair and pea-sized spectacles, raised an eyebrow. "Chief complaint?"

"I'm sorry; what's that?"

"What's wrong with you?" she asked with exaggerated patience.

Ward gave a short, humorless laugh. That question would take several hours to answer.

The nurse glared at him over her spectacles, reminding him of every villainous librarian he'd ever known. "Why are you at the ER tonight?" she asked. Demanded, really.

"I, um …" He hesitated, glancing at his shoulder, where an impressive cluster of shrapnel was embedded in the flesh. He was beginning to question the wisdom of coming here; a shrapnel wound probably wasn't the sort of injury—chief complaint—that the ER staff saw every day, and they were going to ask questions, questions he didn't have decent answers to.

"Do you have a foreign object lodged in your rectum?" the nurse inquired, sighing heavily.

"What? No!" he exclaimed. "Do people really come in here with … ? No, wait, don't answer that." He took a deep breath and told the first lie that came to mind. "I am here because a propane tank exploded and some of the shrapnel hit me in the shoulder." It was close enough to the truth, anyway.

"Let me see," the nurse ordered. Ward gingerly took off his jacket and showed her his shoulder. The metal fragments had torn straight through his shirt and into his skin, burying themselves deep inside the muscle tissue. The pain was down to a dull roar, and he'd certainly had worse, but it was still a gruesome sight. There was something about metal protruding from flesh that simply felt wrong on a fundamental level, causing the stomach to turn and the eyes to look away.

The triage nurse merely raised an eyebrow. Ward wondered where she'd acquired the level of eyebrow dexterity she was displaying that evening.

"Well, it isn't very crowded right now," she said. "We can take you back right now. Follow me, and the doctor will see you shortly."

The nurse lead him to a large open area behind the triage desk filled with cots and blue plastic chairs. Ward sat down heavily on one of the cots, exhaling deeply. It felt so good to be off his feet for the first time in almost twelve hours.

"Just wait here, and a doctor will see you as soon as possible, Mr. Simmons," the nurse informed him, pulling the curtain halfway shut around the bed and walking away, the click-click-clicking of her shoes echoing back to him over the muted din of hospital sounds.

Ward sighed heavily. What in the world had possessed him to use the young biochemist's name as an alias? He hadn't thought about his old team in a while, and it was just as well. Things had been difficult since the fall of SHIELD, and he didn't need distractions.

Escaping prison hadn't been too much trouble; between overcrowding and budget cuts, the penitentiary where he'd been incarcerated couldn't hold a chicken. No, the hard part had been deciding what to do after that. Once all the fuss had died down and they were no longer looking for him, he sat down in a diner, much like the one where he and Skye … he sat down in a diner, bought a double cheeseburger and a strawberry milkshake with a stolen credit card, and had a nice long think.

He thought about Garrett, and the awful things the man had ordered him to do, and that he'd done because he'd been too weak to resist the man's psychological manipulation. He thought about the team, and how they'd trusted him, made him feel included for the first time in his life. He thought about May and Coulson. He thought about Fitzsimmons, and how they'd begged him not to hurt them, young voices pleading, frantic hands pounding uselessly at the glass as the pod detached from the aircraft and plunged into the sea.

And he thought about Skye, the first woman who'd ever loved him.

And when he was done thinking about the past, he began thinking about the future. SHIELD was gone; Hydra was gone; Garrett was gone, and the team would never take him back, not after what he had done to them. Which begged the question, what now? A normal life was out of the question; he just couldn't see himself flipping burgers or going to the local community college. Plus there was the fact that he was a wanted fugitive. Sitting there in the diner, polishing off his cheeseburger, he realized that the only thing he really wanted to do was run missions, just like he had before the fall. Completing an operation successfully without losing anyone had been the one thing about his old life that felt right, made him feel like a real human being instead of what Garrett and his childhood had turned him into.

So he started doing missions. He stuck to the small stuff at first, drug traffickers and convenience-store robberies. Then he'd moved on to bigger targets, including a few rogue ex-SHIELD agents hoarding alien technology and a ring of arms smugglers. It wasn't easy. Though he'd often said otherwise, as a SHEILD agent he had never really worked alone. He'd had people who did recon, made sure he had equipment, dropped him off, picked him up, and took care of debriefing afterwards. Now, he had to pick the op, scout the area, secure the necessary supplies, execute the mission, extract himself, and do whatever cleanup was required, and he had to do it all on his own. It was strange; he'd never appreciated the value of a team until he was forced to work without one.

Nonetheless, he enjoyed it. It made him feel like he was finally doing something good, making up for all the crimes he'd committed. It was his redemption, his way to prove, if only to himself, that he could do better, that he wasn't all bad. That maybe underneath all the layers of manipulation and control and abuse and bad choices, there was something worth saving.

Sometimes he still thought about them, his old team. Caught a whiff of grapefruit that reminded him of Skye, or heard someone speaking Mandarin and thought of May. But that was complicated, and he'd never been one to dwell on complicated things.

So he did missions. And sometimes the missions went wrong. Sometimes he got hurt, like now, and with no medics to patch him up afterwards, he was forced to seek outside help or just treat the wounds himself. He could fix superficial injuries, minor lacerations, first- and second-degree burns, contusions. He even had a couple of suture kits he used to stitch himself up. But the shrapnel in his shoulder and back was so deeply embedded and in such an awkward position that he doubted he could take it out on his own. Besides, he was tired, and he hurt. He just wanted to let someone else do the work for once, so he'd gone to the emergency room.

He felt silly now, sitting on a cot surrounded by what could only be described as _normal people_. Beyond the curtain, he could see the desk clerk filing charts and viciously cracking his gum, probably trying to quit smoking for the benefit of his girlfriend—no, boyfriend, Ward amended, catching sight of the man's blonde highlights and subtle eyeliner. A kid with an animal bite was telling a nurse how a "shark the size of a dump truck on steroids" had mauled him, although going by the shape of the wound, it had most likely only been a very angry kitten. A large, beefy man was clutching a bloody dishtowel to his lacerated hand, a panicked look in his eyes. Two doctors who looked about ready to fall asleep on their feet high-fived each other before heading away, presumably going home to their families. A young couple walked towards the exit having a heated argument about a sexually transmitted disease, shepherded by a nurse who looked all too eager to see them gone.

Seeing these flashes of people's lives, he felt a flicker of envy. While he was fully aware that normalcy had always been out of the question for him, perhaps he could at least have been _happy._ He could have trained with May on the weekends, played Scrabble with Fitzsimmons … he could have been with Skye. But he'd burned that bridge the second he shot Thomas Nash. And he didn't know if, given the chance, he would've done it differently, because despite the man's faults he owed Garrett his life. But he also owed the team his life, many times over, and it had torn him apart to have to choose between them.

Quickly, he sent that train of thought to the deep, underground place where he kept any and all things related to the fall of SHIELD. Irritated by his lack of focus, he rubbed his hurt shoulder and cracked his neck. It wasn't the time to be getting nostalgic.

The smell of grapefruit made him look up, every sense on high alert. Then he spotted her, a slim, olive-skinned woman in a black jacket with her brown hair in a loose braid down her back. Skye. Quickly he ducked his head, afraid she'd seen him. Despite staying mostly on the right side of the law for almost a year, he was still a wanted fugitive, and he didn't feel like having to escape from prison a second time. Maybe she wouldn't notice him.

But as he watched out of the corner of his eye, she did a sweep of the room, dark brown eyes taking in every person, object, and exit, analyzing it, and committing it to memory. He couldn't help but feel a flicker of pride; he'd taught her that. But then her gaze fell on him, and her hand went to the bulge in her jacket where she no doubt carried some kind of firearm. Ward braced himself: it would either be a bullet or an icer, and either way it would hurt.

But the only thing he heard was her voice. "Ward?"

He looked up. She was standing at the edge of the curtain, facing him, one hand inside her jacket resting on her weapon just in case, but not making any overtly threatening moves.

"Yeah."

He saw a slight movement under her jacket as she tightened her grip on the weapon, but she did not draw and she did not shoot.

"Icer or bullets?" he asked slowly.

"Icer," she replied, her voice carefully measured.

There was another long pause, and the tension between them was almost palpable. Ward sat perfectly still, afraid that any movement he made might set her off.

"Are you going to shoot me?" he asked. A fair question; he'd betrayed the team, taken her hostage, and almost killed Fitzsimmons.

"Still deciding," she answered, in the same measured tone. "Oh, by the way, hands where I can see them, no sudden movements, all that jazz."

"Right."

They were silent for another minute or so, until Skye asked, "Why are you here?"

"Shrapnel wound," he told her, nodding slowly at his shoulder. "Didn't give myself enough time to clear the blast radius before the charges went off."

"Blowing up a kindergarten?" she asked derisively.

He shook his head, ignoring the barbed comment. "Biotech lab. They were trying to engineer a new strain of smallpox."

Recognition flickered on her face. "Wait a sec, Q-Tech? You were the one who blew up the Q-tech building?"

Ward nodded. "It took some doing, but once I found the holes in their security, it was relatively simple. And I hit the fire alarm before I set off the charges so there wouldn't be anyone in the building when it blew up," he added, a touch of pride in his voice. He'd taken a risk, pulling the alarm, and for no other reason than to spare the lives of a dozen or so bio-terrorists. It was something the old Ward, Garrett's Ward, would never have done.

"Good for you," Skye said with a touch of sarcasm. "I'm sure you feel real good about yourself."

He stayed silent; there was no good answer to that.

"You seriously blew up Q-Tech," she muttered, mostly to herself. "Those dudes have been a major pain in the ass since the fall. We've been fighting them on and off for months now, no success, and here you go, one guy with a brick or two of C-4—"

"Actually, it was Semtex," he corrected. "And it was twelve bricks."

"Whatever." She shook her head in bewilderment.

"So have you decided whether or not you're going to shoot me?" Ward inquired, careful to keep his hands visible and his posture non-threatening.

"Nope."

Ward remembered something. "Um, I've been meaning to ask about, well, about Fitz," he stammered awkwardly. "They told me he had brain damage, from, well, you know."

Skye's face hardened, and she pressed her lips together. "Yeah, he does. He gets these really bad seizures, and he has trouble with talking and understanding when other people talk. He and Simmons sometimes have to use BSL when it gets really bad. And he's got partial paralysis on his right side, too."

"I'm sorry," Ward whispered, face heating in shame.

"Yeah, you should be. So, while I'm debating whether or not to shoot you, how about you tell me what you've done since you escaped from prison?"

He started to shrug, then thought better of it. While not lethal, icers could be painful. "Missions," he told her. "Just like when I was with SHIELD, but now I'm on my own."

"Missions," she stated. "Riiight. What kind of missions?"

"Just … missions. Like blowing up biotech labs and tracking down fugitives and taking back stolen tech."

"Murdering cops? Double-crossing your allies?"

Frustrated, he shook his head. "No! I'm trying to do better. To … atone, for lack of a better word. For what I did to you guys."

Skye glared at him. "Like that's even possible. You're a monster."

"I am," he admitted. "Or at least, I have it in me. I've done horrible things, and there's no excuse for any of it. But that doesn't mean I have to keep being a monster. These missions, they're my way of trying to stop being a monster."

She didn't look convinced. "Let me ask you something, now that you're trying to do better. Was any of it real? Being my SO, saving Simmons, all those times you had our backs, was any of that real? And tell the truth for once in your life."

The remark stung, but he deserved it. He thought for a minute. It was a good question: how much of it had been real? That was one of the complicated things that he'd been trying desperately not to think about for the past few months.

"Some of it was," he said lamely. It was as good an answer as any. "And some of it wasn't. A lot of it wasn't, actually."

Skye took a cautious step closer. "When you kissed me in the supply closet, when we were at the Hub, was that real? Did you feel anything, or were you just manipulating me?"

A lump rose in Ward's throat, and his chest tightened. That moment with Skye had haunted him for a long, long time, a constant knife in his gut that would twist at inopportune moments. Hiding in the dark, with Hydra soldiers who didn't know his status as a sleeper swarming through the hallways, he'd known there was a chance he wouldn't make it out alive. And he didn't care. His life was rapidly reaching the point where he didn't know which way was up, and while he wouldn't have chosen death as an escape, he wouldn't have minded, either. Even if he did live, he'd have to betray her, possibly kill her, if Garrett ordered him to. He still had a naïve hope that she'd come join Hydra with him, but he doubted it. She was so pure, so driven, so loyal. He was going to lose her, one way or another.

So he had told her how he felt, one last confession before everything went to hell. And when their lips met, it made him feel something that he at first couldn't put a name to, he hadn't felt it in so long. Love. For the first time in far, far too long, Grant Ward had felt love.

But he couldn't describe all this to her, not with his mouth suddenly full of sawdust, so all he said was, "Yeah, that was real. It was the realest thing I'd done in a while."

The answer seemed to satisfy her, because she eased her hand halfway out of her jacket and took another step closer. "So what about now? Are you being "real"?"

"Real enough," he replied, then considered his next words carefully. "You remember when we first met, when you asked me if I'd ever killed anyone?"

She nodded. "And you said that you had, a few of them, but you didn't feel good afterwards, and your grandma doesn't know. What's your point?"

"That was real. I didn't feel good afterwards. I remember, after the first time, I went back to the hotel where we were staying and showered for a solid hour, because I kept feeling the guy's blood on my hands. The second time, it didn't feel as bad, and that scared me so much I got sick." He hesitated briefly. "John Garrett was with me on that op, and he yelled at me and told me I was weak. And the third time, I just sort of blocked everything out. But it still felt wrong. And I knew that wasn't who I am. I'm not a killer."

Skye snorted. "Not a killer? Oh, my god. You shot Agent Hand and her guards and those cops outside the diner and Thomas Nash in cold blood. How the hell are you not a killer?"

"Did May ever tell you the difference between a killer and a person who kills?" he asked, finally meeting her eyes.

"No, because there isn't one. A writer writes; a singer sings; a shoemaker shoe-makes, and a _killer kills._ It's that simple."

He ignored her and continued. "She told me just after the Berserker staff incident. It's something her SO said to her after her first kill shot. "Someone who kills takes a life, but a true killer enjoys it." By that definition, I'm not a killer. Sure, I've killed, but mostly because Garrett was pulling my strings." He paused and took a deep breath. This was the complicated part, the part he'd avoided thinking about for so long. "You asked me how much of it was real. Well, betraying you, killing all those people, trying to kill Fitzsimmons, that wasn't real. It wasn't the real Ward; it was the thing Garrett created."

"That doesn't make it okay," she stated flatly.

"No, it doesn't. What I did was wrong, and nothing can ever make it okay. But it does mean I might have it in me to do better."

"So do you?" she asked. Her hand slid all the way out of her jacket, something he would have advised against, but Skye had always been too trusting for her own good. "Is the real Ward any better than the one who almost killed Fitzsimmons?"

"I think so," he whispered, rubbing at temples. The antiseptic smell in the ER was giving him a headache, right behind his ears. Suddenly very uncomfortable, he changed the subject. "What've you guys been up to? Last I heard, Coulson was trying to rebuild SHIELD."

Skye regarded him suspiciously, then shrugged her shoulders and reached over to pull up one of the blue plastic chairs to sit on, evidently deciding that the question was aimed at making conversation rather than acquiring intel.. Ward could hardly believe she was being so trusting, after everything he'd done. It was equal parts sloppy and endearing.

"We're not exactly rebuilding SHIELD," she began, "more like building something better to replace it. We're not going to make the same mistakes we did the last time. Like, we've gotten rid of the security clearance levels thing. No more secrets. Remember when you and Fitz got sent out into the field without an extraction? That'll never happen now. If you go on a mission, you know everything about it. And if you're working on a project, you know everything about that. There's a little bit of compartmentalization, but it's mostly for the operatives in case they get captured. Other than that, we're pretty transparent."

"I wonder how long that'll last," Ward muttered. The words came out of his mouth before he could stop them.

"As long as I can hack a computer," Skye informed him. "Seriously, we're building something really cool. Right now I'm the head of our Cyber division, which currently consists of me, me, me, and the laptop I won in a bet."

"I remember that laptop," he remarked. "You hacked SHIELD with it."

"I've hacked a lot of things with it," she boasted. "Right now I'm working my way through Stark Industries' mainframe. Just for fun, you know."

A tiny ghost of a smile flickered on Ward's face. "Good luck getting past JARVIS. It's the most advanced artificial intelligence in the world."

"And I'm the most advanced non-artificial intelligence in the world."

"Yeah. Speaking of which, why are you here? You don't look hurt."

"It's actually May," Skye told him. "She has malaria, and they've got her upstairs in Medicine."

"How'd she get malaria?" he asked, concerned. "Did Q-Tech infect her?"

"Nope. She got it the old-fashioned way." Skye took a deep breath, and Ward sensed this was going to be a long story. "See, we had this mission a few weeks ago that took us all over sub-Saharan Africa, and it was _hot_, like the inside of an oven in Texas, only with bugs and poisonous snakes everywhere. So anyway, there are a whole bunch of weird-ass diseases you can get in sub-Saharan Africa, so Simmons made us get like eight shots and take eleven pills before we went there. And May didn't take hers, because she said germs are afraid of her or something, and good luck trying to get her to do anything she doesn't want to do. So now she has malaria."

"Is she going to be okay?"

Skye nodded. "Yeah; they're just keeping her here until her fever goes down. Got her on chlorine and cry-mine, or something like that."

"Do you want to go see her?" Ward asked. "I'll behave, I promise."

"It's fine," she assured him, leaning back in her chair. "She's pretty delirious from the fever, and she almost nailed me in the face because she thought I was Deathlok or something. AC's with her now, and he's doing a pretty good job keeping her calm."

"That's good."

"He sent me sent me to the cafeteria to get some food," Skye continued. "And it's really crowded, which makes no sense since it's oh-dark-thirty a.m., which is when normal people are supposed to be asleep, right? Anyway, I got stuck sitting next to the winner and still champion of oversharing. I mean, where exactly do people get the idea that I want to know every single detail of their last visit to their proctologist? So I got the hell out of there before I shot him or something, and I guess I ended up down in the ER."

"Are you going to tell Coulson I'm here?" Ward asked, fiddling nervously with the edge of the cot.

She shook her head. "Haven't decided. Oh, but I have decided not to shoot you."

"Good. That's good. Um, this might sound kind of weird, but would you tell May I hope she gets better soon? Or something like that? And tell Fitz and everyone else I'm sorry."

"Okay." She paused for a minute. "Was May real?"

He considered for a minute. "Sometimes. Training with her definitely was. It was nice to have a sparring partner I could really let loose on. I miss that," he added.

Skye's phone buzzed, and she reached inside her jacket pocket to retrieve it. "Fitzsimmons need me," she said, glancing at the screen. "I've got to go." She stood up, and Ward felt his heart ache as he saw her turn to leave.

"I love you," he said impulsively.

She turned around, startled. "What?"

He looked down, hesitating. He was treading on dangerous ground, but if he didn't tell her now, he'd never get the chance. Looking her straight in the eye, he said, "I love you. And I never really realized it until it was too late, but I do. I always have. And if I had a chance to do everything over again, I think I'd do it differently, because I know what you mean to me now."

"Grant…" she whispered. Her face softened, and she approached him cautiously. Mindful of the wound on his shoulder, she reached out and wrapped her arms around him, and he leaned his head into the hollow between her neck and shoulder. He felt her warm hand resting on his back with a gentleness he'd never felt before, and he didn't ever want the moment to end.

"Listen," she said, pulling away slightly but keeping one hand on his shoulder. "This … this doesn't have to be the last time we see each other. Keep "being real" and maybe I'll meet you again sometime."

"How will you find me?" he asked.

"Told you, I'm the most advanced non-artificial intelligence in the world," she replied with a grin.

"And the others, will you tell them?"

She considered for a moment. "How long before you're out of here, do you think?"

"About an hour and a half, tops," he answered. "They're not too busy tonight."

"Then the fact that we met here might slip my mind until then."

He reached out and hugged her again, and she let him, trusted him enough to let him be close to her. He felt her warmth against his skin, and let the gentle pressure of her arms soothe him. "Thank you," he whispered into her jacket.

And then she was gone, and he felt her absence acutely, an ache on his skin where her hands used to be. But he savored the memory of her, her smile, her voice, her smell, her touch.

A preternaturally tall doctor in mismatched scrubs came by with pliers and local anesthetic, and Ward tried not to wince as the shrapnel was wrenched unceremoniously from his shoulder. Once the injury had been properly disinfected and bandaged, he signed his discharge paperwork, promised the doctor to be more careful when lighting the grill, and stepped out the door into the cold October night. Hands in his pockets because he didn't have gloves, he gazed up at the clear night sky, an inky black expanse scattered with pinpricks of light. The autumn wind nipped at his ears and swirled around his legs, but he didn't feel the chill. He had other things on his mind.

"I am Grant Ward," he whispered to the night, a puff of fog escaping his mouth as he spoke. "The real Grant Ward."

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><p><strong>Author's note<strong>: So, what did you think? I tried to strike a balance between Ward taking responsibility for his actions while realizing that he still has the potential to be a good person. I know this isn't a classic redemption piece, but honestly I can't see him ever rejoining the team. Still, I do believe in a redemption arc for Ward, and this has been my take on that. Thank you all for reading and putting up with my ridiculously long pieces. Please leave a little criticism if you have the time.


	2. The Second Meeting

Author's note: Originally, this was going to be a oneshot, but it got longer than expected, and since people have been writing in suggesting I expand it, I'm going to write another chapter a la _When the Fireflies Came._ NB, I have not seen the s2 premiere, and am holding off on that until this piece is done so that I am not influenced by it. So if you'd like one more chapter after this, let me know _quickly_, as I am itching to watch it. Most of the sparring sequences in this piece are pretty accurate, a mixture of self-defense and the karate I practice. Apples and peanut butter do indeed make a very good snack, especially if you cut the apples so the slices are circular. A rotator cuff (as those of you who've read _Shatter _may remember) is a series of muscles and tendons that stabilize the shoulder joint, though unlike in _Shatter,_ there is no damage to anyone's rotator cuff. The weird guy who failed the FBI psych tests may or may not be a tongue-in-cheek reference to NBC's _Hannibal_, the newest addition to my "favorite TV shows" pile. Bandar Seri Begawan is the capital of Brunei. J and C# (See-sharp) are programming languages. So, enjoy, and tell me what you thought. If I make a third chapter, I want it to be the best one yet, so pile on the constructive criticism!

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><p>If someone had told him that, at the age of 29-almost-30, he would be cleaning up vomit at a junior high school in the middle of Nowhere, Massachusetts, former SHIELD agent Grant Ward wouldn't have believed them. But that's exactly what he found himself doing on an unseasonably warm September afternoon.<p>

Like most things in life, getting a job as a school janitor had seemed like a good idea at the time, since he was running short of cash and, ever since his chance encounter with Skye two months ago, he'd felt guilty about stealing people's credit cards. And after a two-week-long hunt for an escaped Index Asset landed him in the middle of Nowhere, Massachusetts where the local middle school was looking for a custodian, Ward had secured gainful employment for the first time in his life. To his surprise, he found himself enjoying it. It was solitary work; he discovered that people have a natural tendency to ignore janitors and other maintenance workers, which suited him nicely, and collecting a paycheck at the end of the week was oddly satisfying. It would only be temporary, of course, until the next mission came along, but until then, he could relax, at least as much as was wise for a wanted fugitive.

But now, mopping up the last of some poor kid's stomach contents, he was beginning to regret his choice of career.

The bell rang, and several dozen tweens spilled out of various doorways and made their way through the freshly waxed hallways into various other doorways. Watching the kids swarming the halls during passing periods always put an ache in his stomach. He'd never had a childhood, not a proper one, anyway, and he couldn't help but envy these kids their normal lives. He resented that they the relative innocence he never had, and something clawed at the inside of his chest as he realized that it was too late, that he could never go back and relive those years the way they should have been lived.

After the hallways had cleared and the late bell had rung, Ward spotted a scrawny, red-haired boy sitting on the floor next to the art room, who, judging by his chalky complexion, was likely the one who'd gotten sick. He had his knees drawn up to his chest and his head in his hands, and Ward couldn't help but feel sorry for him. Quietly, cautiously, he approached the boy, who looked up at him with red-rimmed eyes. He'd been crying.

"Hey, kid," Ward said, setting aside his mop and sitting down next to the boy.

"Hey," he replied listlessly.

"I'm Grant," he offered. "What's your name?"

"Ryan," the boy answered. "Ryan Dill. And if you call me Dillweed, I'm going to … well, just don't call me that."

"Never occurred to me," Ward assured him. "So, uh, what's wrong? Why aren't you in class?"

"You know why," he muttered. "I threw up in front of everyone, and Parker's never gonna let me live it down."

Ward stayed quiet, not knowing what to say. Despite his proficiency in disarming nuclear bombs, he had almost no idea how to deal with kids.

"Parker and his friends have been picking on me since school started," Ryan continued. "I told the teacher, and you know what she said? She said I just needed to stand up for myself more. To "assert myself." She didn't call Parker's parents, didn't even write him a demerit. Just told me to assert myself."

Ward didn't know what to say. Apathetic adults had been one of the reasons his childhood had been so violent. He couldn't remember the number of times a parent, a teacher, a coach had told him the exact same thing Ryan's teacher had. As though being a victim were a choice.

"Well, Parker's a bully," Ward said, looking for the right words. "You stand up to bullies." It sounded lame, but he couldn't think of any other way to put it.

Ryan looked at him sideways. "And how am I supposed to do that, Mr. Janitor-man-who-knows-everything?"

"Use your voice first," Ward instructed. "Stand up straight, head high, shoulders back, and just flat-out tell him to cut it out."

"Like that'll ever work," Ryan scoffed.

"It actually works pretty well," said Ward, though he himself had had relatively few occasions on which to use it. Guns had been his first line of defense against the bullies of the adult world, with fists coming in a close second. "Most bullies are just trying to make themselves feel tough by picking on easy targets. They're not used to people standing up to them. So show him how strong you are."

"But I'm not strong," Ryan protested. "I'm just a loser."

"Hey, kid, look at me," Ward ordered. Ryan turned his head miserably and looked Ward in the eye. "You're not a loser," Ward said. "Don't ever let anyone make you think that. Because once you think you're a loser, people will take advantage of that. They'll start to treat you like one, and you'll do all kinds of things to prove them wrong, and that will _not end well_. You threw up in class, big deal. Cafeteria food will do that to you. That doesn't make you any less of a person."

Ryan looked at him quizzically, and Ward realized that he probably sounded a bit strange. "Look, if it gets too bad, my closet's over by the computer lab," he offered. If he couldn't offer solace, he could at least offer sanctuary. "You can come chill there any time you want."

"Really?" Ryan asked, and Ward got the impression that this was the first time an adult had offered to help him in any meaningful way.

"Really. I'll even write you a note so you can miss class."

"You're a janitor," Ryan pointed out.

"By day," said Ward, smiling mischievously. "At night, I'm a secret agent who fights crime. Forging absence excuses is nothing."

"Yeah, right," Ryan snorted, but he seemed happier.

"No, really," Ward insisted. "I have to go now, but remember what I said. And if you ever need to talk, I'm here." He stood up and shouldered his mop.

"Thanks," Ryan said, also standing. "That, uh, that actually means a lot."

Feeling an odd sense of satisfaction, Ward clocked out and headed home. Since his time in Nowhere, Massachusetts was only temporary, he hadn't bothered to rent an apartment. It would introduce such inconveniences as bills and neighbors, as well as making him much more traceable than he was comfortable with. So he'd bought a sizable pickup truck, paid with a stolen credit card (the last time, he swore), and parked it in a clearing in the woods outside of town. There, he'd begun assembling a campsite, nothing fancy, just a few logs for benches and some bear-proof canisters so he didn't have to keep all his supplies in the truck. A circle of stones around a hole in the ground was occasionally host to a small campfire, when he was in the mood for it and the winds were strong enough to blow the smoke away. It was a nice home, even better for the fact that he'd built it himself.

It was here that he found her.

She was leaning up against his truck, absently twirling a lock of hair around her index finger and drawing patterns in the dirt with the tip of her shoe. She wore a light pink sweater and gauzy gray scarf, and a blue messenger bag was slung across her shoulder. As he watched, a gust of wind ruffled her clothing, and she looked up at him and smiled.

"Hey, Skye," he said, not knowing what else to say.

"Grant," she replied, and he noticed she called him by his first name.

"How long have you been here?" he asked.

"Not long. And don't worry; I didn't touch anything. Nice little setup you've got here," she commented, looking around. "Very covered-wagon-pioneer."

"Thanks." They stood there awkwardly for a few seconds until Ward asked, "How'd you find me?"

"Well, everyone leaves a trail somewhere, so I did some digging on the 'net, and I came across a Grant May working as a janitor at some middle school out in the sticks.."

"Clever. Come on; sit down," he added, remembering his manners. "Can I get you anything? Food, water?"

"Nah," she said, sitting down on a tree stump he'd sanded and turned into a chair of sorts.

Ward sat down against a tree across from her. "Did you tell them about me?" he asked. "About meeting me two months ago in the ER?"

"Yeah," she said, a note of apology in her voice. "I had to. After what happened with Miles last year, well, you know. I got the usual tongue-lashing from Coulson, but I don't think he really meant it. And Fitzsimmons asked about you, if you were doing okay. I think they really miss you, or at least, the person they thought you were."

He shook his head and looked down at his lap, shame creeping up his neck. He picked up a leaf and started ripping small pieces off of it, crumpling them between his fingers as a distraction. "Do they know you're here?"

"No. Coulson's off on important SHIELD-director business in Bandar Seri Begawan, and so it wasn't too hard to sneak out for the day. It's just the two of us."

"So how are things going with the new SHIELD?" he asked, looking up from his leaf-shredding.

"Pretty good," she replied, and he noticed her face lighting up at its mention. Skye had never belonged anywhere before joining their team, and the fall of SHIELD had perhaps hit her hardest of all of them. And now she had the opportunity to take back that sense of camaraderie, to be part of a family again. Ward smiled internally as he saw the sparkle in her eye, and then the smile fell away as he realized that, had he made what he now knew to be the right choice, he could have been a part of her family too.

But he was done with that now. He had regrets, enough for a lifetime, but that didn't mean he had to dwell on them.

"Right now, our biggest problem is personnel," Skye continued, interrupting his train of thought, "since so many agents scattered to the far corners of the earth after the fall. And since we're still technically a terrorist organization, people aren't exactly lining up around the block to join us. So we've basically been dipping into the reject piles of other agencies, FBI, MI-6, Secret Service, which usually isn't a problem; a lot of them were denied for stupid stuff like stealing a car when they were fourteen or having flat feet. And hey, I used to work for a cyber-anarchist organization, so I'm one to talk."

"True."

"Oh, but there's this one guy we picked up a couple weeks ago, a complete weirdo. Failed the FBI psych screenings, which I can totally believe; he's creepy as heck. But AC has us keep him around because he's also dead brilliant. Still, if I start finding severed body parts in his locker or something, he's outta there."

Ward almost laughed.

"Most of the guys we recruit just flunked the physical fitness tests," she added. "We just turn 'em over to May, and after a couple weeks the words "potato chips" and "TV" are gone from their vocabulary."

"So how is May?" he asked, picking a stray thread on the sleeve of his jacket. He really needed to get new clothes; these were falling apart.

"She's doing okay," said Skye, pushing some hair out of her face. "We train together in the mornings. She's teaching me tai chi and hand-to-hand."

"And how's that going?"

"Good." Her eyes took on a mischievous gleam. "Want to go a few rounds?"

Ward looked up, surprised. "You mean, right now?"

"Sure. Last time we met, you said it was nice to have a partner you could let loose on."

He shook his head and looked down. "I don't know if …"

"What, does your shoulder still hurt or something?" she asked, unslinging her bag and standing up.

"No," he said. "Full range of motion, no damage to the rotator cuff." He swung his arm to demonstrate.

Skye's face split into a grin. "I know. You're just afraid you'll get beaten by a girl."

"I am not."

"Are so. Come on; there's a patch of grass over there we can use." She gestured to a small area a few yards from where he'd parked his truck. "C'mon! You'll love all the new moves May taught me."

Her enthusiasm was contagious. He'd always liked that about her. "Bring it on," he said, standing up to face her.

The grass made a perfect sparring surface, soft enough to cushion a blow, but not spongy. They shrugged off their jackets, and Skye put her hair in a loose ponytail to keep it out of her face. They began with some simple drills and a few takedowns to warm up, and Skye was surprisingly competent; she moved with a fluid grace he'd never seen in her before. When he … left, she'd been a decent fighter, but with no real aptitude for hand-to-hand, and he felt a pang of jealousy that May had been able to teach her what he had not.

Then they began sparring in earnest, full open, first one to pin the other wins. Ward took the offensive first, swinging his leg around to sweep Skye's feet out from under her. Skye jumped out of the way, then moved in and drove her knee into his stomach with force that belied her small frame. He doubled over, momentarily stunned, but recovered quickly and aimed an elbow strike at her ribs. Smoothly, all in one motion, she blocked the elbow and grabbed his arm, twisting it behind his back. Still surprised at the level of skill she was displaying, he muscled his way out of the lock (crude, but effective), and spun around with a hooking punch. But once again, Skye was too quick for him, using her small size to dodge and weave, evading his strikes, wriggling out of joint locks that should have had her pinned. He was reminded of trying to hold a wet bar of soap in the shower.

Nevertheless, he won the first round, by dropping his guard to bait her into coming in close. When she moved in with a front kick, he grabbed her leg and threw her on the ground, pinning her on her stomach with a knee to her back.

"Break!" she yelled, tapping the ground with her hand. He immediately released his hold and helped her up. Her hair had escaped her ponytail and was flying wild around her dirt-stained face, and there were grass stains all over her pants. A thin sheen of sweat coated her skin, glistening in the late afternoon sun, and her breath was ragged and labored. She'd never looked more beautiful.

"Best two out of three?" Skye asked, grinning at him.

"You betcha." So they began again. Now that he knew a little more about her sparring style, Ward gained the upper hand quickly, landing strike after strike, anticipating her movements. He managed to knock her off her feet, and she hit the grass with a sharp exhalation, then lay on her back, struggling clumsily onto her side into a ground fighting stance. But when he moved in for the final blow, she brought her knees up to her chest and kicked out as hard as she could, catching him square in the stomach and ripping the air from his lungs. Immediately, she sprung to her feet, a wicked gleam in her eye. She'd been playing possum!

"That's fighting dirty," he gasped, sucking in air.

"Is there any other kind?" she said, aiming a kick to his thigh. He dodged, but her leg came back and knocked his feet out from under him, and he hit the ground hard. Before he knew what was happening, Skye's foot was above his neck, and he had a momentary flashback to his last stand against May. Skye's face shifted into hers, and he could almost feel the force of her blow crushing his throat. Even after almost half a year, his voice was still a little raspy, and it had only recently stopped hurting to swallow. And the fear, the gut-wrenching fear and the absolute certainty that he was going to die at the hands of the same woman he'd worked alongside for so long, and the knowledge that he deserved it …

"Well?" Skye looked down at him impatiently.

"Break," he said, tapping his hand against his thigh and bringing himself back to the present. "One more?"

The last round ended in a stalemate, because they both agreed that they were hungry and exhausted and that the poor grass had had enough for one day. So, hair plastered to their faces with sweat, grass stains decorating their knees and elbows, Skye and Ward wearily gathered up their jackets and dragged themselves back to the campsite.

"I think I've got some spam or something around here," Ward said apologetically, digging through one of his bear-proof canisters. "Maybe some protein bars. I-I haven't exactly been eating very well."

"It's okay," Skye assured him, retrieving her bag from where she'd dropped it. "I brought my own food." She produced a large plastic bag of sliced apples and grinned.

"Would you mind sharing? I haven't had fresh fruit in forever." It spoiled too fast, and he only liked the kind that wasn't coated in wax and herbicide, which tended to run on the expensive side.

"Sure." Her face brightened. "Know what's better than apples?"

"What?"

"Apples with peanut butter," she said, pulling out a Tupperware container of peanut butter.

They ate in silence, enjoying each other's company, the only sound the steady crunch of apples being chewed. She was right; apples and peanut butter were a match made in heaven. They shared a bottle of water, and stretched out the various muscles and joints that had taken the most abuse in the past half hour's sparring tournament.

"So how're things going with you?" Skye asked him, licking the last of the peanut butter from her fingers and wiping them on her pants.

"Okay. Work's easy, and I get paid every week. And I like camping out here. Kind of reminds me of…" he let his voice trail off.

"Of what?"

He didn't particularly want to talk about it. Those five years he'd spent alone in the woods, being slowly worn down into a fine, malleable clay for Garrett to mold had been the best and the worst of his life. On the one hand, there had been the blissful solitude, respite from all the bullying and harassment, and the satisfaction of carving out his own niche in the ecosystem. On the other hand, and this became especially obvious in retrospect, it was those years that had broken him, turned him into the monster that had betrayed Skye and the rest of the team.

But despite that, he found himself saying, "Before I entered the Academy, well, it's kind of a long story, but Garrett had me camped out in the woods for a couple of years. All alone, no one but a dog—" whom he made me kill "—and I just had to make my own way. And that was how he did it, how he made me … unreal."

"Is it hard? Being in the woods again, I mean."

"A little," he said. "At first. But I've had a lot of time to think, and one of the things I've figured out is that if the woods changed me once, they can change me again. There's something cleansing about living close to nature."

Skye raised her eyebrows. "Never had you pegged for a pocket philosopher," she remarked.

He shrugged. "I think the real Ward can get a little deep. Besides, intellectualism isn't weakness, the way I used to think it was." At the mention of intellect, something occurred to him, and he . "Um, I hate to ask, but how's Fitz doing?"

"He's okay," she replied. "Talking's getting better, and he hardly ever gets seizures anymore. Also I'm learning BSL, since he seems to prefer that." She made a few hand gestures. "That's 'Hi, how are you? My name's Skye' in sign," she said proudly. "Also May's teaching me Mandarin, and I'm teaching myself Spanish because why not."

"Becoming quite the polyglot," he remarked.

"Hey, I don't just learn languages. We've got a sort of ad hoc Academy going for the new recruits, and I teach a class in computer languages. Everything from J to C#."

He tried to picture Skye as a teacher, standing in front of a room full of wide-eyed rookies discussing how best to hack government agencies without getting caught. He wondered what kind of homework she assigned. Go home and do something subversive and anarchical, probably. A-plus, you put a virus on Coulson's laptop. Making Fitzsimmons' holotable malfunction, eh, that's a B. You ate your vegetables and went to bed early; F-minus.

"We're trying to get May to teach a class or two in hand fighting, but she just glares at us when we bring up the subject," Skye continued. "I'm lucky she puts up with me in the mornings. Once Fitz is a little better, he wants to start teaching some basic engineering. Oh, and speaking of Fitz, Simmons is cooking up some sort of treatment that's supposed to stimulate brain cell growth so he can recover more brain function."

Ward sat up. "Really? I didn't think that was possible."

"Dude, aliens invaded New York; my boss rose from the dead, and there are people wandering around who can turn into big green monsters or shoot a dime off someone's head with an arrow. Anything's possible. She explained it to me a couple of times, but it's kind of out of my league. But once it's ready, we're thinking of publishing it and making it available to anyone. Like, to send the message that the new SHIELD's not about secrets and lies and keeping all the cool tech to ourselves."

An ache developed in Ward's chest, somewhere above his heart. More than anything, he wanted to be a part of this new SHIELD, to belong to a team again. There was possibility there, hope, and he couldn't be part of it. Never could. Not with what he'd done. _Don't do the crime if you can't do the time,_ the judge had told him after he'd burned down his family's home. He'd made his choice, and he'd paid the price.

"You okay?" Skye asked, seeing the melancholy in his eyes.

"Yeah," he replied, slipping on his poker face. "Just thinking."

"Penny for them," she said. "Your thoughts, I mean."

Ward shook his head. "Not this time. Not tonight. It's getting dark," he observed, glancing up through the trees. The sun was dipping below the horizon, casting light horizontally through the sky. The clouds he could see were illuminated bright pink with sunset, and the rest of the sky was a dusty purple.

"Can I stay a little longer?" Skye asked. "I don't need to be back until tomorrow morning."

Ward smiled, for the first time in what felt like forever. "Sure. Here, take off your shoes and get into my truck. The view out here is gorgeous."

They kicked off their mud-caked boots and brushed off their clothes as best they could. Ward climbed into the back of the truck and zipped himself into his sleeping bag. Skye sat next to him, covered in a blanket, and together they watched the stars come out, a thousand pinpricks of silver surrounding the thin slice of crescent moon.

"I named myself after this," she said, after a few minutes.

"Huh?"

"The night sky. I was sitting on the steps outside this internet café watching the stars come out, and it was so beautiful, and I thought, wherever you go, the sky's always there. I liked the idea, so I started calling myself Skye."

Ward looked over at her, then up at the stars. He'd never really given much thought to where her name had come from. But he could see why she'd chosen it.

On a normal night, the peaceful, inky blanket of the night sky would soon give way to nightmares, about any one of a number of missions he'd been on, or of Garrett beating him senseless to drive the "weakness" away, or … or of watching Fitzsimmons fall. And lately, Skye had been heavily featured, impaled on stakes or shot through the neck, and he always knew, in the way one knows in dreams, that it had been all his fault.

But tonight, he felt a hand reaching over and tentatively stroking his hair. He looked over at Skye, who smiled at him before turning her gaze back to the night for which she was named. Slowly, he fell into a deep, soft sleep, and there were no bad dreams.

When he awoke, it was already dawn. Forest birds were flitting from branch to branch, exchanging their good mornings, and the air smelled of dew and trampled grass. The space next to him in the back of the truck was empty except for the crumpled blanket, and there was an ache in his chest where Skye had once been.

But she wasn't gone for good. If she'd found him once, she could find him again. And even if she didn't, he would think of her every time he watched the stars come out.

As he washed his face and got dressed for work, he considered what to do next. This was probably the longest he'd stayed in one place since the fall, and if Skye could find him, so could INTERPOL and the US Marshals and whoever else was looking for him. But he liked his campsite, liked having a steady job, and besides, he'd promised Ryan help dealing with Parker and his bully friends. Maybe he'd stay long enough to make sure the kid was all right, even if it was a little risky.

It was what the real Ward would do.


	3. The Third Meeting

**A couple of notes before we begin**: First of all, I have to thank you guys. I've had more support writing this piece than any other I've written. So many of you have favorited, followed, and reviewed both this story and me as an author, and I'm grateful to each and every one of you. Second, here is the obligatory background information that I oh-so-helpfully provide at the beginning of every story I write: Toradol (ketorolac tromethamine) is a non-narcotic painkiller and member of the NSAID class of drugs. The deltoid is a muscle on the upper arm and part of the shoulder. Neurogenesis is the creation of new neurons from stem cells. It has been known to occur in mice and other small mammals.

Third, uh, May worked her way in here while I wasn't looking. Hope you don't mind.

* * *

><p>A huge ball of fire lit up the night as former SHIELD agent Grant Ward hit the ground running, feet pounding the concrete as he raced across the open stretch of ground towards the fence of the Q-Tech compound. Hearing the sound of klaxons blaring in the distance, he put his head down and ran faster. Only a thousand yards between him and safety. His shoulder ached, and he dreaded the thought of having to scale the twelve-foot fence that surrounded the compound. At least he had thick utility gloves to protect his hands from the barbwire this time.<p>

He felt a pang of nostalgia for his days as a SHIELD operative, when an extraction team would be standing by to pick him up. No rappelling down buildings or scaling of walls involved. Those were the good old days. Now, if he wanted to blow up a biotech lab, he was all on his own. Stealing the blasting equipment had been relatively easy, since the word "security" seemed to have fallen out of the local military base's vocabulary. Figuring out where to put the charges in order to destroy everything had been more of a challenge; he was no explosives expert and his mission briefings used to come with instructions about that sort of thing. He'd eventually had to Google it. Then, there had been gaining entry into the compound. Feeling rather silly, he'd used a pair of bolt cutters purchased at Ace Hardware for $11.99. Getting past the guards and laying the charges had only called for good old-fashioned stealth, which required neither theft nor purchase. And now, now was the hardest and most dangerous part of the mission: the escape.

As if to drive the point home, a burst of machine gun fire cut through the darkness. Looking over his shoulder, Ward saw a muzzle flash repeatedly like a strobe light from up on the roof. But it wasn't aimed at him. Briefly, he wondered why, then decided not to question his luck and kept on running.

But the distraction had cost him dearly, and a stray tangle of jumper cables wrapped itself around his ankle. Stumbling, he fell to the ground, barely catching himself with his hands and skinning his cheek on the oily asphalt. Momentarily stunned, he swallowed a curse and staggered to his feet, then abruptly dropped down again as he heard a bullet whine past his ear. Of course, being face down on the slick, stained concrete wasn't going to do him much good if they were firing from the roof. He didn't bother to swallow the next curse that came to mind.

And then there was a hand grabbing him by the scruff of the neck and trying to haul him to his feet.

"Come on! Get up!" an impatient voice yelled. "I am not going to carry you!"

"Skye?" he asked, looking up disbelievingly. His former teammate was dressed all in black, an icer in one hand, his shirt in her other. Her face was smudged with grime and she smelled like blasting powder. Apparently he wasn't the only one who'd decided to blow up Q-Tech that evening.

"Yes. You hurt?"

"No …"

"Then let's go, unless you have a burning desire to become Swiss cheese!" She gave his shirt another yank as more machine gun fire erupted from the roof.

Pulling himself to his feet, he gestured to the perimeter of the compound. "I cut a hole in the fence at the north end, but we're completely cut off. We'll have to climb."

She shook her head. "You go ahead. I have to go back for May; she's not answering her radio."

"I'll come with you, then," he said. "You could use backup."

Skye looked like she was about to argue, but the asphalt beside them erupted into a cloud of sparks and stone fragments, and so she turned back towards the still-smoking building and took off at a brisk clip, keeping her head down and running in a zigzag pattern to confuse anyone shooting at them.

"Do you have her last known location?" he called, zigzagging across the concrete beside her.

"She was supposed to be setting charges at the base of the lab, and I lost contact when your explosives went off. Nice timing, by the way. I was heading over to get her when I saw you go down. Thought you might be hurt."

It was incredibly brave of her, he realized, as another hail of machine gun fire cut through the ground behind them. There were people he'd worked with during his time in SHIELD who would have just cut their losses and split, leaving him and May to fend for themselves. People could brag about loyalty and never leaving anyone behind, but when the chips were down, more often than not they would choose to save their own skins.

Maybe this new SHIELD had promise after all. With people like Skye at the helm, he would definitely put money on it.

They reached the eastern wall of the main building and pressed themselves up against it, breathing hard. A few more bursts of machine gun fire rang through the air, then went silent. Skye looked over at him and nodded, then gestured to the remains of the lab facility that lay about fifty yards to the left. It was all open ground, and there were countless piles of smoking, smoldering debris and rubble that could trip them, but it was doable. He nodded back at her. He was in.

They began running towards the remains of the lab at a rapid jog, eyes on the ground in front of them to avoid tripping. Burning chunks of debris cast ghostly light across the ground, and the air smelled like chemicals and burning rubber. Ward coughed a few times, then pulled his shirt over his nose and mouth. It didn't help much, but it was a psychological comfort, like the five-second rule. He could see Skye doing the same as she nimbly leaped over a chunk of concrete with twisted steel rods sticking out of it. The debris was becoming thicker as they drew closer to ground zero for the explosion.

"May?" Skye yelled, her voice hoarse and choked. "May, if you can hear us, sing out!"

There was only the crackle of the fires and the distant sound of shouting. A hot, sick feeling settled right below Ward's diaphragm as he realized that May might not have survived. And if she hadn't, it would be his fault. If his explosives hadn't gone off before hers and Skye's, she wouldn't have been hurt.

He let out a sigh of relief as he heard a faint but present yell coming from a few yards in front of them He couldn't make out the words, but it was definitely May's voice.

"Skye! Up ahead!" he called to her.

"I hear it," she responded, scrambling up a mountain of twisted concrete with catlike agility. "May! It's Skye! Keep talking."

He could dimly see her outline now, a human-shaped shadow silhouetted against the dim, smoky sky. Skye reached her first, and was kneeling down beside her when Ward came into view. May was lying on her side on top of a block of concrete, clutching her shoulder. Her face had that pinched look that meant she was in pain and trying very hard not to show it. Her hair was a mess and her face smudged with soot and powder residue. A thick stream of blood ran down the side of her face from a cut near her scalp, and there were numerous small lacerations and burns all over her body.

The last time he'd seen her, the day before they threw him in prison, she had stood on the sidelines, watching him from a distance, her cold, silent glare slicing through his chest like the circular saw he'd tried to use to cut off her face. He'd wanted to apologize, to say something, to tell her … he didn't know what. But it didn't matter, because she'd all but crushed his larynx, and it hurt so much he could barely swallow, much less speak.

Everyone had been hurt by his betrayal, but May had been hit especially hard. It was so hard for her to trust people, and while she hadn't been close to him the same way she was with Coulson, they'd run their fair share of missions, and spent time together off-duty, bonding over glasses of whiskey. She'd come to regard him as a friend, a title she so rarely bestowed upon anyone, and he'd thrown it all back in her face.

When May saw him, her face resolved into an expression of dark, icy hatred.

"What is he doing here?" she spat, her voice dripping venom.

"Relax; he's on our side," Skye assured her, pulling gauze out of her pocket and pressing it to the other agent's shoulder. "Remember I told you I met him in the ER last year when you had malaria?"

"I don't care what kind of fences you've mended," May growled, pushing herself up into a sitting position despite Skye's protests. "He almost killed Fitzsimmons. He took you hostage. He betrayed us all. He'll never be on our side."

"Well, he is. He came back with me to get you, didn't he?" Skye insisted.

"Look, you may be some starry-eyed idealist who thinks that everyone's heart is pure, but in a little place called reality—"

"Can we just shelve the whole he-betrayed-us thing until we're out of here? We have bigger fish to fry! Bigger fish with huge machine guns shooting at us."

May reluctantly agreed, then shot Ward the Death Glare, warning him that she would unleash unspeakable terrors on him if he proved anything less than reliable. He nodded to show he understood.

"Okay, somehow I doubt we'll be climbing any walls, so let's see if we can make it to that hole you cut in the fence," said Skye. Then, to May, "Can you walk?"

"Yeah," May said, staggering to her feet, leaning heavily on Skye. Instinctively, Ward moved in to help her, but stopped himself. The Death Glare was so powerful he could almost feel it on his skin.

They headed north, towards the section of the fence where Ward had cut a hole in the barbed wire. It was slow going; May was more injured than she let on, and despite her stubbornness, the physical body could only be pushed so far. Ward brought up the rear, keeping a careful eye out for any Q-Tech security guards who might have spotted them. The machine guns had been silent for some time, but he had no doubt they would start up again the moment they spotted the trio of agents. Moving became easier once they had mostly cleared the debris field, and Ward could see the northern fence up ahead, burning debris casting faint light on the barbed wire.

Fear shot through him when he saw a searchlight beam split the darkness ahead of them.

"Skye…"

"I see it. Come on!"

They quickened their pace, but another beam swept the ground behind them, then came back for another pass, closer this time. The next beam flew directly over them, and Ward threw up a hand to cover his eyes as the blinding light swept across them.

"They've spotted us," May called, voice tight with pain. "We'll cover as much ground as we can before they come after us."

They moved even faster, with Skye practically carrying May. The smoke grew thinner, and it became easier to breathe, but they still weren't going fast enough. The searchlight swept over them again; the afterimage blinded him momentarily and he almost tripped. He could hear shouts behind them, and the clicks of gun safeties being removed.

The fence was just up ahead, maybe a hundred feet. Maybe, just maybe, they could make it, if only they moved just a little faster …

His hopes were dashed when a glance over his shoulder revealed a group of six men in full body armor carrying semi-automatics running towards them. There was no way out; even if they made it through the fence, the men would just follow them into the woods.

Skye must have seen them too, because she stopped and turned around just as they reached the hole in the barbed wire. "Take May," she ordered Ward. "Go to the rendezvous point; the bus'll pick you up. I'll buy you time." She pulled her icer out of her belt. "Go!" Not giving him time to object, she turned and ran towards the approaching soldiers.

"Skye, no!" he called after her. "It's suicide."

Looking back over her shoulder, she shot him a wicked grin. "Not if I don't die!"

He wanted to protest, but she was already gone. Swallowing the bile rising in his throat, he looped an arm under May's shoulders, feeling her shudder at his touch. Together, they climbed through the fence, Ward wincing as a piece of wire snagged his clothing, and melted into the woods surrounding the compound. The trees were dense and there was no light to guide them save for the full moon that hung in the sky. Several times he almost tripped, but managed to keep his footing.

"Where's the rendezvous?" he asked, daring to speak to May directly for the first time since they'd seen each other.

"Cave up ahead," she gasped. "Just keep going straight; we'll practically trip over it."

The way to the cave was long and arduous. The woods were pitch-black, and while Ward had a keychain flashlight stashed in his boot, he didn't want to risk alerting anyone to their presence. Branches and vines kept slapping his face and grabbing his legs, and May seemed to grow heavier with every step. Halfway there, the adrenaline started wearing off, and the injuries he'd acquired began making themselves known. The scrape on his cheek stung, his shoulder ached even worse than before, and his ankle throbbed from when he'd tripped. His fingers were beginning to grow numb with nighttime cold, and the adrenaline withdrawal was sapping his strength.

A palpable feeling of relief washed over him when he spotted the cave, a small hollow in the side of a hill disguised by a tall birch tree. Between that and the darkness, Ward almost missed it, and he was confident that no one else would see it either. He ducked inside, setting May down gently on a flat stretch of dirt. Sighing, Ward leaned back against the cave wall and pulled the keychain light out of his boot. It flickered dimly, illuminating the small, dark cavern they were in. May looked even worse now that he could see her clearly; her face was white and covered in a sheen of sweat, and her teeth were gritted against the pain. He glanced down at her shoulder and saw a large patch of torn-up flesh that was bleeding sluggishly into her jacket.

"You okay?" he asked her. It was a pointless question; of course she wasn't.

"Fine," she snapped.

"Your shoulder looks pretty bad."

"I'll live," she grunted, from between clenched teeth.

"Can I take a look at it? I won't hurt you; I promise."

"As if your promises mean anything."

She was right. And he realized he wasn't going to get anywhere with her. When he'd met Skye in the ER, she'd listened to him, given him a chance to talk, driven perhaps by the idealistic notion that there was still some good left in him, that the man she'd thought she'd known was in some way real. May was different. Driven, single-minded, and vengeful. Skye had been willing to listen. He doubted May would afford him that courtesy.

He was right. Visibly choking back a scream, May propped herself up against the cave wall and, with her uninjured arm, drew a small dagger out of her boot. "If she dies, you die."

Ward nodded. It was only fair. He should have been the one to stay behind, to give his life in repentance. Not her. She was so young and pure; it was too soon for her to die, while he was living on borrowed time. The thought of her being killed out there in that lonely concrete lot made him sick to his gut, and May's knife in his throat would be almost welcome if that were the case. But her words, glib and flippant, echoed in his mind. _Not if I don't die. _The same words he'd said to her when they retook the Hub. Drawing his knees up to his chest and taking a deep breath in through his nose to quell the rising nausea, he wished, more than anything else, for her to make it out alive. Because, he realized, she could do it. It had been over two years since they had taken on the young, hip hacktivist from the Rising Tide who couldn't tell the safety release from the magazine release. She was top level at sparring; he'd witnessed that for himself, and the easy, seemingly effortless way she scrambled over those piles of rubble to reach her new SO spoke of strength and agility.

And, more than anything else, she had what he didn't. A reason to live. She had the new SHIELD, and her team, and people to go home to. Sometimes the deciding factor in a fight was who was more determined, not who was more skillful.

The small whimper that escaped May's lips drew his thoughts back to their present situation. If possible, she looked worse than before, and the wound on her arm was leaking blood more freely now.

"Uh, May?"

"Shut up," she snapped, then clenched her jaw shut.

"I think you're going into shock or something."

She was shaking now, and he didn't like the gray color of her skin. Rising halfway to his feet, he pawed at the pile of leaves and twigs at the back of the cave. Occasionally, SHIELD operatives would stash a first aid kit at their rendezvous point, in case a specialist were injured on a mission and needed medical attention before the extraction team could pick them up. Sure enough, his hand brushed plastic, and he pulled out a white box with a red cross on it. Paydirt. Opening it, he went straight for the painkillers. Toradol, not morphine, since the last thing a person behind enemy lines wanted to do was dull their reflexes and cloud their mind. Pulling the cap off with his teeth, he approached May cautiously. She reached out and grabbed his wrist in a grip that was surprisingly strong.

"Don't you dare."

"Relax; it's Toradol," he assured her, showing her the label. "It'll help with the pain."

She narrowed her eyes at him, but pain and desperation won over any doubts she may have had. He injected her, and she sighed in relief as the drug flooded her system. Carefully, making sure his hands were visible the whole time, he pulled out a pair of trauma shears. "I'm just going to cut away your jacket and get a better look at your shoulder, okay?"

Reluctantly, May nodded. Flashlight in his teeth, he cut off the sleeve of her jacket and began to treat the wound. May watched him like a sniper the whole time, hand gripping her knife, ready to strike if he made a wrong move. He moved slowly and carefully, narrating each step to her so she knew what to expect. The wound wasn't so bad once he'd cleaned away all the blood. No major arteries were damaged, although there were some metal fragments lodged deep in her deltoid muscle. He didn't want to take them out, since it would probably cause more bleeding, so he just disinfected the wound and put a sterile dressing on it, tacking it down firmly with medical tape. When that was done, he closed the first aid kit and sat back down, pleased with the job he'd done.

After a minute, May spoke, so quietly he thought for a moment he'd misheard. "Thank you."

A ghost of a smile crossed his face.

They sat in silence a little while, until May said, "Skye told me what you've been doing lately. Running missions on your own."

He looked up, surprised that she'd been the one to initiate the conversation. He'd expected her to maintain the awkward silence as long as possible, letting him stew in his own guilt. "It pays the bills," he said lamely. "Only, not really. I had a job as a janitor for a while. That, uh, paid the bills."

May expertly arched an eyebrow, and he was reminded of the ER nurse the first night he'd met Skye.

"I was up in this small town in Massachusetts chasing an Index Asset with minor mind-control abilities. After that was done, I decided to stay on as a janitor at the middle school, just to decompress for a while," he explained.

"How'd that work out for you?"

"Actually, not that bad. I mean, cleaning up vomit has its ups and downs. But it was a nice change of pace. And I met this boy named Ryan, a seventh grader, real nice kid. Some eighth graders were giving him a hard time, and I let him hang out in my mop closet when it got bad. Taught him a few self-defense moves, too."

"Sounds nice. Why'd you leave?"

He shrugged. "It was the end of the school year, and Ryan was doing pretty well standing up for himself, so I figured I shouldn't stay in one place too long. I am a wanted fugitive, after all."

"That you are."

They were silent for another minute, until he said, "I know this means nothing to you, but I've been wanting to say it since the fall. I'm sorry for everything I did. I'm sorry I lied to you. I'm sorry I used you. I'm sorry I almost killed Fitzsimmons, and I'm sorry I tried to saw your face off. I-I'm sorry."

"You're right," she said, a note of bitterness in her voice. "It means nothing."

"Figured."

"Skye might have forgiven you, but I never will."

He gave a sharp, humorless laugh. "Skye hasn't forgiven me. And she hasn't forgotten what I've done, either. She's just willing to give me another chance. She knows I'm not the same Ward who betrayed you—"

"You'll always be the same," she snapped, cutting him off. "People don't change."

"You're right," he admitted. "They don't. But maybe this is who I was all along. Not that that's any excuse," he added quickly, sensing her objection, "but I can do better. I can be a good person."

"Right," she huffed. "A good person doesn't throw two scientists into the ocean because he doesn't even have the guts to see their faces when he kills them."

Guilt stabbed him in the chest, but he pushed it aside. It wasn't of any use to him. He took a deep breath, searching for the right words. "When I was in prison, I spent a lot of time in solitary, and all you can do in there is think. So I thought. I thought a lot, and I haven't really stopped thinking since, and this is what I've figured out. First of all, none of this is an excuse. There's no excuse for what I did. But there is a reason, and it's not that I'm a bad person. It's that I'm _weak._" He all but choked on the word. "John Garrett warped my mind so badly that I didn't know which way was up, and I let him, because I was fifteen and vulnerable and came from a bad situation. He kept me isolated for years, used all the classic mind control techniques. And my parents, my brother, they didn't exactly help either. They all turned me into something I'm not. I was a product of their mistreatment. A monster." He bit his lip and blinked a few times in the dim light.

"Go on," said May, her tone deadpan. "I want to hear the rest of this."

"Okay." He nodded, collected himself, and continued. "I'm not under their control anymore, which begs the question, who am I? Who's the real Grant Ward? And I've been figuring that out ever since. And you know what? I kind of like him. And so does Skye, I guess. And I know, I _know_ that nothing I ever say or do will bring Hand or anyone else back from the dead, or fix Fitz's brain, or undo any of the damage I've done. But I'm trying to let that go, because that's what you do with the past. You learn from it, and move on."

May was quiet for a moment, considering these words. "And what have you learned?" she asked.

The words came so naturally to him that he didn't even stop to think before he spoke. "I've learned that I need to think for myself, that I can't let anyone else tell me what matters and what doesn't. I'm my own person, and I have a right to make my own decisions. And I've learned that it's okay to care about people, and compassion isn't weakness. I've learned to accept responsibility for my actions, and that while other people might play a part in what I do and what I am, ultimately, the decision and the consequences are mine."

He could have sworn there was a glint of approval in May's eye.

Just then, there was a rustling sound outside the cave, and a figure appeared at the entranceway. Ward moved forward into a crouch, and May tightened her grip on the knife, but there was nothing to fear.

"Sorry it took me so long," Skye said, ducking into the cave and pushing her hair out of her face. "My flashlight broke and I got really, really lost. Hey, are those granola bars we stashed in here this morning still there, or did you guys eat them all?"

A smile spread across Ward's face as relief flooded his system. Skye was safe, uninjured, and alive.

"You hurt?" May asked, looking at her protégé with concern.

"Couple bruises," the young agent reported. "Those guys didn't know nuthin'. But I'm gonna feel it in the morning, that's for sure. Now, can I please have a granola bar? I'm starving."

May fished the box of granola bars out of the same leaf pile where Ward had found the first aid kit, and they each had one. Apparently Skye's brush with death hadn't made her any less talkative, and between bites she told Ward everything that had been going on with SHIELD-take-two.

Apparently Simmons's neurogenesis treatments were working, and Fitz was doing much better. "Stopped needing to use sign language just when I was getting good at it," she groused. Their makeshift Academy had grown rapidly, and now there were over a hundred students. Skye still taught computer classes twice a week, and May had finally caved and was teaching hand-to-hand on Saturdays, while Fitz held workshops on holographic engineering. Simmons didn't teach; instead, she commanded her own field team. The thought of the fragile young biochemist working in the field seemed counterintuitive to Ward, but then, it had been well over a year since he'd seen her last. She'd come a long way.

After Skye was done talking about the new SHIELD, Ward filled her and May in on his life. He told them about various missions he'd run, and even threw in a humorous anecdote about a foul-mouthed drug dealer he apprehended, who had then tried to escape by feigning an epileptic seizure, poorly. Then he told them about Ryan, the kid he'd befriended during his time as a janitor in the middle of Nowhere, Massachusetts.

"Last day of school, Parker, this eighth grader who I swear is the spawn of Satan comes up to him and starts in with the usual insults, and Ryan just stood up, threw his shoulders back, and yelled, 'Leave me alone!' as loudly as he could. And the look on Parker's face was just precious. He'd never had anyone stand up to him before. I don't think I've ever been prouder."

"Good for you," said May.

"Good for him," Ward corrected. "Takes a lot of courage to do something like that."

Skye broke out another round of granola bars, and they were all munching happily when Ward heard the faint hum of a jet engine overhead. This was his cue to leave. Skye and May were going back to their world, a world full of hope and promise and family, and there was no place for him there. He wished—

He didn't wish anything. His life hadn't turned out the way he'd wanted it to, but there was nothing he could do about it now. It was like he'd told May: you don't cling to the past. You learn from it, and then move on.

As the two SHIELD agents rose to their feet and started towards the entrance of the cave, May lingered a moment. "Hey. Thanks for patching me up."

"No problem."

"And …" She shifted awkwardly. "Once all this Q-Tech stuff blows over and we all have a second to breathe …"

"Yes?"

"You want to get drinks or something?"

* * *

><p><strong>Author's note<strong>: A five hundred word oneshot that's turned into a fifteen thousand word three-shot_. _ First there was _Fireflies_, which ended up being 11k_. _Now this. I am physically incapable of writing anything short, aren't I?

I'm afraid this is the final chapter, so please don't bug me to write more. I know that you guys would probably love it if I continued this until the Internet overloaded, but a) I want to watch season 2, b) you have to end it somewhere, and c) the Internet would probably not appreciate being overloaded by my fan fiction. Fear not; there will be other stories, both fanfic and original stories over on FictionPress.

And, as I mentioned before, I have to admit I was blown away by the amount of feedback this received, in follows, favorites, traffic, and reviews. When I wrote my first fan fiction serial _(Shatter),_ I had to threaten not to continue if people didn't start reviewing, and the feedback I did get was generally unhelpful. This … this blows my mind. Thank you all. Thank you all so, so much for your help, especially icewitch73 and astridv for leaving great reviews that gave me insight into my writing style and guidance for future chapters.

Love JC


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